premed11 Posted May 29, 2007 Report Share Posted May 29, 2007 are we allowed to use calculators during the mcat? When i read all these posts, it appears we are not allowed to use them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuantum Posted May 29, 2007 Report Share Posted May 29, 2007 no...definitely not. The math required of you is relatively simple. As a rule-of-thumb...if you find yourself having to do complicated math on the MCAT...you are probably doing the question wrong or there is a much easier way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cary_fan Posted May 29, 2007 Report Share Posted May 29, 2007 Kuantum is right. There are lots of ways to simplify the math on the MCAT: - round to an "easy" whole number to do math - round to a close square if you need to find the root - look at an equation and instead of actually plugging in a number, just figure out if it should increase/decrease based on one variable changing. this is especially useful when dealing with logs, acids/base equilibrium, etc eg. finding the square root of 80 is hard to do by hand, but the square root of 81 is 9. Since this is all multiple choice, chances are you'll easily find one answer much closer than the others! Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
premed11 Posted May 30, 2007 Author Report Share Posted May 30, 2007 wow thx for the tips Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhopeful Posted May 31, 2007 Report Share Posted May 31, 2007 Another tip, knowing the numeric fractions, from 1/2 to 1/9, can be helpful. Most questions involving math, you can boil it down to a rough fraction, then loosely simplify it to one of those fractions and then use the numeric value to closely estimate the answer. This works because if you scan through the multiple choice answers, you'll notice that many of them are not like really close to each other (i.e. more likely 25 vs 60, not 22.5 vs. 23). This allows you to do questions quickly as you don't have to do all that math. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Law Posted June 1, 2007 Report Share Posted June 1, 2007 Try to avoid calculators all summer long! That'll help your - in your head - math skills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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